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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Rattle's performance of both the Glagolitic Mass and Sinfonietta are beautifully prepared and wonderfully performed. However, there are recordings which do Janacek much more justice. This is a composer for whom wild abandon is often more important than precision (and no, I am not advocating sloppiness...), and a composer who had little in common with Gustav Mahler or Richard Strauss, as seems to be the case here. Any of Mackerras' three recordings of Sinfonietta (personal preference the 1959 recording with the Pro Arte Orchestra), or either of his recordings of the Glagolitic Mass (again, personal preference the 1984 Czech Phil. recording on Supraphon) will make my point clear. I have a great deal of admiration for Simon Rattle, and included in my admiration is his recording of The Cunning Little Vixen by the same composer; but I feel he has in some ways missed the point here.

Dating from Rattle's early career, these recordings have stood the test of time and remain prime recommendations for anyone looking to add these original and exciting works to their collection.

The Mass was, I think, Rattle's first recording with the CBSO and is given a competent and red-blooded performance that I have enjoyed often. The orchestral playing is alert, fresh and lithe and recorded with a great degree of detail. This is no workmanlike run-through and yet they already sound like they've been working with Rattle for many years. The extraordinarily versatile CBSO Chorus turn their attention to yet another language and manage to sound completely at home in it. I can't say how 'Czech-like' they sound, but their diction is clear and crisp and they sing with both haunting beauty and thrilling power.

The soloists are generally very strong although I suspect that Felicity Palmer's rather plummy-sounding soprano might not be to everyone's taste. I've grown used to it over the years although I have since come to prefer Sheila Armstrong's more elegant reading for Tennstedt live on BBC Legends [ Janácek - Glagolitic Mass; Strauss, R - Der Bürger alsEdelmann ], despite the insert and notes crediting the soprano as Ameral Gunson and Armstrong as the alto! Gunson takes the small alto role for Rattle too, joined by Malcolm King as an authoritative and dark-toned bass and the characteristically fearless John Mitchinson who trounces just about everybody else on record in the treacherously difficult tenor role.

I must also mention Jane Parker-Smith's fantastically insane account of the organ solo.Read more ›

I have yet to see a bad review of the Glagolitic Mass, but my introduction to it was most unfortunate: My wife and I were listening to a concert on the car radio without having any idea of which work was being performed (we missed the first two movements). After about five minutes, we both started to feel irritated, without quite knowing why, but after two more movements my wife noticed that every single phrase was repeated exactly - at least from a rhythmic point of view - and after about ten minutes, we felt that the whole work was beginning to sound entirely predictable, and we did, indeed, begin to sing ahead of the actual performance, to see if this would prove to be the case. Sadly it did prove to be the case, and after scratching my head for a few more minutes, I said to my wife, "If someone forced me to put a composer's name to this piece, I would have to say that it sounds like really bad Janacek, and the only alternatives to that which I can think of would have to be that the work is by: a) one of his worst students, b) a work by Janacek himself when he was 13 years old, or c) a work by Janacek himself when he was on his death-bed and no longer capable of rational thought". I'm sorry to have had to say this, especially in the light of the fact that I know several other works of his, including other works from the same period of his life, and I very much enjoy listening to them. But I thought the work in question was simply unusually bad for a composer with such a reputation. Perhaps the performance was atrocious, but I'm not very excited at the prospect of giving it another chance. If you'll just give me a year or two to recover...